'An Insignificant Man' makers welcome changes in CBFC, but still in fix

Mumbai, Aug 13 (IANS) The makers of “An Insignificant Man” — a movie that documents Arvind Kejriwal’s journey and in the news for a row with the CBFC — have welcomed the changes in India’s film censor board. However, they rue that it won’t affect the status of their yet-to-be-certified movie.

On Saturday, the Twitter handle @aimthemovie — which represents the film — featured the makers’ reaction on the sacking of Pahlaj Nihalani, who as the censor board chief had asked them to get a no-objection certificate (NOC) from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, former Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dixit and Kejriwal himself, before the movie could be granted a censor certificate.

Nihalani was on Friday sacked by the Information and Broadcasting Ministry, which has appointed writer-adman Prasoon Joshi as the chairperson of the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), apart from bringing in National Award winning-actress Vidya Balan as one of the board members.

Reacting to this, the makers said in tweets: “People who have been asking us if the change at the censor board will help the release of ‘An Insignificant Man’, sadly the answer is ‘No’.

“Our film has already been seen by 2 CBFC committees (i) Examining Committee (ii) Revising Committee. Both reacted adversely to the film. The EC refused to talk to us while the RC asked us to get NOCs and bleep out names of Congress and BJP. That’s their final word on our film.

“Our only hope right now is the FCAT (Film Certification Appellate Tribunal). We appealed against the CBFC’s decision at the FCAT and our hearing has already taken place.

“Our hearing took place last month and we presented our case to the FCAT. We are now awaiting the final verdict from them. Fingers crossed.”

The tweets further read: “The decision to change the censor board chief is a welcome first step towards (hopefully) overhauling India’s censorship process. So far, political films have unfortunately faced resistance from every government and every censor board in India. We need urgent reforms.”

Khushboo Ranka and Vinay Shukla had begun their journey to make “An Insignificant Man” by following Kejriwal on his election campaign in late 2012. Their movie has been featured at various film festivals, but they still await a release on homeground.